Dave Ewing's Back 'eader
Well-Known Member
So did they clarify it within the week or not? I didn't see anything but that doesn't mean it didn't happen, I suppose. And presumably (going on last night) if they did clarify it then they made a media announcement to say that anything hitting the arm in the area, deliberate or not, is going to be a penalty? The fact that the timeline was that the Otamendi incident happened and then they started talking about clarifying the handball rule pretty much confirms what Clattenburg said - this new rule was literally introduced at the point the Otamendi handball was given and there had been no clarification of this new rule prior to that moment. In the middle of arguably the most prestigious club competition in the world. That is fucking shocking IMO. Even putting aside the shadiness of the sudden implementation of this new rule, I'm sorry but if that last night is now a handball then the game is significantly ruined because all that is doing is introducing an element of random jeopardy into the top level of football. They may as well stop the match, toss a coin and give one of the teams a penalty.
I think the word that is the most useful here, LF, is 'manipulation'! Would those games have rendered a penalty at the opposite end? I think that there is zero chance of us getting a pen when the ball brushes a Schalke arm, and would PSG be gifted a pen on 90+4 had it glanced a Rag elbow? We City fans have thought for a while that Uefa is not fit to govern the game in Europe and this latest episode just confirms it for me! Uefa, and probably the PL, will use VAR to engineer preferred outcomes. The expectation that VAR, even with HMP Walton in charge of the screen, would deliver a correct decision regarding those incidents in our games over the last couple seasons where we have been clearly shafted, seems will be a 'piss in the wind' experience!
Danny Mills last week was clearly confused with the obfuscation regarding how VAR would be used in CL games. Having read out Uefa's explanation it was clear that there was an incredible amount of scope for the ref/Uefa to come up with five or ten outcomes! The black and white that we were expecting from VAR seems to have morphed into fifty shades of grey!